Posts

Versailles: Science and Splendour

Image
Excellent exhibition at the Science Museum looking at scientific discovery at the Court of Versailles. This was a clearly described show, cleverly laid out and with some stunning objects and paintings. It’s not a period I’ve ever studied but I am increasingly drawn to it. From realising that the three Louis’s of the period ruled for 149 years I was hooked. The show was full of intriguing stories and people and lead to a lot of Googling, both in the show to check links my brain was making and since. I give you Antoine-Augustin Parmentier who argued that potatoes were the answer to famines caused by bread shortages and declared them edible in 1772 or Madame de Genlis, tutor to the royal children who commissioned this model of a chemistry lab. Throw in a stuffed Rhinoceros killed in the Revolution, some wonderful paintings, including a portrait of the first pineapple grown in France, and the knife used to operate on the kings anal fissure, then there was something for everyone! C...
Post a Comment
Read more

Picasso: Printmaker

Image
Useful exhibition at the British Museum looking at how Picasso used prints throughout his career. The show was laid out clearly and chronically with good explanations of the different print techniques. I knew some of the prints well but hadn’t realised how many different types of print production Picasso had mastered. I loved that they also showed prints by artists who had influenced him amongst his work which included some beautiful Rembrandts and a Goya. The show also gave a good outline of his career in general including portraits of his wives, girlfriends and art dealers. Closed 30 March 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard
Post a Comment
Read more

Rethinking the British Museum

Image
Interesting exhibition at the British Museum introducing five possible redesigns of their west wing. The show was held in the Reading Room, which it is always magical to enter, and consisted of architects’ models of the five ideas. The space under review represents over a third of their displays, and currently includes the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Sculptures and the Assyrian Lion Hunt. I’m not convinced that some of the designs would give more and better space for display they seemed to concentrate more on providing prestige public space which seems a common theme of museum refurbishment. It’s great to get more people to come but surely you want to entice them to look at the objects and research. I think I would have found it useful to have a model of what the space is like now to make more direct comparisons. There was a plan but I found it hard to visualise how that related to the new ideas. Closed 2 March 2025    
Post a Comment
Read more

Lucien Freud in the Studio

Image
Magical lecture at the National Portrait Gallery with Rose Boyt, daughter of Lucien Freud, talking about her memoir inspire by sitting for him. Boyt was sympathetically interviewed by curator and writer Hettie Judah and the event started and finished with a beautiful reading from the start of the book. Boyt explained that the book came about after she found a diary from the period of one of the sittings but realised her memory of the time, due to subsequent events, was very different. She talked about what it was like to sit for long periods and the commitment that took and highlighted conversations she’d had with her father while he painted. Most magical though was the number of people in the audience she knew and referred to which made it a charmingly interactive event.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained

Image
Thin exhibition at the Wellcome Collection looking at the Kola Nut and its global significance and properties. The commentary said this was an “evolving   display” but other than an interactive table at the centre, which I didn’t have time to explore, I’m not sure what they meant by that. There were some interesting facts around about how the fruit had spread across the world via the slave trade and colonialism, as well as how it was used in products for its caffeine properties, however a lot of the display was in the form of av presentations and therefore time consuming to absorb. Closed 2 February 2025
Post a Comment
Read more

Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights

Image
Thought provoking exhibition at the Wellcome Collection examining the impact of work on health. The show cleverly interwove historical and contemporary ideas and organised objects under three themes of work on plantations, in the street and in the home, picked as they are sites of work that is undervalued by society. I would like to have seen it broadened out to factories, service industries and offices. I spent a long time watching a video on how chemical factories have ground up on old plantations sites along the Mississippi surrounding the towns which were based around the original slave houses. There was also had a frightening section likening prison work to slavery with the astonishing statistic from 2013 that there were more black men in jail in America than would have been slaves in the past. The street section covered people who sell on the street, people who clean urban areas and prostitution. The space was dominated by an installation from Lindsey Mendick inspired by t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Artist’s Palette

Image
Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades looking at artists’ palettes. Alexandra Loske, director of the Royal Pavillion in Brighton and author of books on colour, introduced her book on palettes starting by telling us how it came about. She saw palettes as a way that artists organise colour. Her aim had been to find 50 real palettes and use these as route into talking about the artist and where possible identifying the painting for which it might have been used. She talked us through as selection of these. However as she struggled to find 50 real palettes, she broadened this into looking at them in paintings. She talked about how artists use palettes as a symbol of their art in self-portraits. I’ve used a photo of a palette converted into a clock that I bought a few years ago to illustrate this post and at the end of the talk it was fun for the artist, Maria Bell-Salter, who moderates the ARTscapades events and is always surrounded by her paintings on Zoom, to show us her p...
Post a Comment
Read more